


Trinities and Fallen Places

by noezac



Series: The Paradox of Angels [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Angels, Angels vs. Demons, Demons, F/F, F/M, LGBTQ Character, M/M, Magic, Multi, Paradox, Teenagers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:47:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24412306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noezac/pseuds/noezac
Summary: THE PARADOX OF ANGELS. BOOK ONE.
Series: The Paradox of Angels [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1762927
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	1. Chapter One

_Trinities and Fallen Places Chapter One_

In crowded rooms, Maoney always looked for the exit. There was something comforting about knowing how many steps it would take to embrace the night air, for how many seconds she’d have to hold her breath if the stench of living human flesh became too much to bear in a packed space. 

The auditorium of city hall was grand enough to hold a thousand of Valentina Cross’ citizens, although there were about four hundred in total. Still, somehow, the room was packed with long-nosed men in suits and women with crooked-toothed half smiles. 

When the man at the podium, the crumpled-cheeked Mayor Finlay who always wore a suit two sizes larger than necessary, called her up on stage, Maoney’s eyes darted for the door. 

_ Only thirty steps away _ , she reminded herself, and rose from her seat in the audience. 

Once on stage, everything seemed to fall out of focus, and even the Mayor’s voice sizzled into white noise. One moment he was shaking her hand, the next her vision was filled with rows upon rows of palms moving together and apart again in quick succession. It took Maoney a moment to realise they were clapping. 

They were clapping her. 

“Miss Naomi Waters,” Mayor Finlay announced with a grin, and Maoney’s head was too full with something akin to cotton wool to correct him. 

She didn’t scan the audience as she left the stage, there was no point. The only person who’s face she cared to see was sulking somewhere in the woods. 

She was on the steps, ready to make her way back to her seat, when the sleeve of her cardigan caught on fire. Luckily no one else saw it, the buzz, the glow, no one else felt the burning in her wrist, the sizzling.

_ Not now _ , she begged silently, but again another one of those flapping little symbols was etching itself into her skin. It had started that morning; at three am she had woken to a searing pain in her left wrist. The little mark there, the symbol, the...well it was almost a tattoo, had begun to glow. And now it was multiplying. 

She pulled her sleeve down over her hand and marched back to her seat, head hung as the rest of the awards ceremony proceeded. A smarmy kid with too many teeth from her class was up next, and she thanked the heavens, and one particular Angel who’d come from there, that she would no longer be attending public school: Valentina, said Angel, had offered to homeschool her after the last  _ incident _ .

While the smarmy kid was accepting his certificate for some dumb maths competition that Maoney was too supernatural to bother to learn the name of, her wrist began to burn again. 

Now those little black symbols,  _ Planes _ , Valentina called them, were crawling their way up her left arm. They were like little sunsets, she thought. A tiny circle with a line through the middle. 

And they flapping  _ hurt _ .

But pain wasn’t exactly an excuse to leave the ceremony early. Valentina would excrete a feather if she caused a scene. However, a perfectly normal human girl’s wrist glowing green was more of a reason. 

Now, Maoney had planned on leaving the auditorium discreetly, but that wasn’t a skill she was well rehearsed in. Instead, she bumbled over the laps of people in the seats next to her, tripped over bags in the aisles, and scrambled through the door with several loud thumps.

She could almost  _ feel  _ smarmy boy’s stare, hot on her back like...well, like a  _ Plane _ . 

But  _ Planes  _ didn’t manifest on backs. In a world of Angels and powers and something a little too close to magic, that would just be implausible. 

Outside was immediately different. It was like the world had shifted from slightly-off-kilter to almost-in-balance.. The thing about town was that it was a leap away from the woods, and obviously so. It almost boasted its urban charm in tiles and grout and shops with too many windows and not enough doors. 

It was just cold enough for Maoney’s cardigan to be a redundant granny-like fashion statement, so she pushed her sleeves up, rubbed her hands together until her wrist started humming, and cursed the sky for giving them such a horrendous summer. 

It was a cheap trick, heat. A simple snap of green energy and her body buzzed with warmth. And, okay, technically using her  _ Plane  _ was borderline “illegal”, but since there weren’t any stinky humans around, let alone Valentina, Maoney thought  _ flap it _ and chose comfort over morality. 

Emitdale Woods was like an old American postcard. It was cramped with fir trees and twisted mud paths and clear blue skies overhead that gave way to mountain peaks. Most of the civilians only went into the woods during halloween, or if them and a clique of intoxicated friends wanted to spook each other. And, as depressing as that sounds, it was actually a  _ good  _ thing. It meant that the rickety little cabin in the heart of the woods that Maoney dared to call home was a secret. 

It meant that she was safe.

Suddenly, a shadow. Somewhere. It crept between the trees. It whispered across the wind, stuck in the back of Maoney’s throat. 

She readied her left hand.

“Did I scare you, moany?”

“Dammit, Looke,” she said, lowering her arm. “Don’t sneak around like that.”

“What?” the boy said, blinking. He stepped out from behind a tree and blew his fringe out of his eyes. “I thought your dumb club meeting would still be going on.”

“It is,” Maoney said. “I bailed.”

“Rule-breaker.”

“I had to,” she defended. “My stupid  _ Plane  _ is broken.”

“That’s physically and astrophysically impossible.”

“Well…” Maoney clapped her hands together. “I guess we’re done here.”

The thing about Looke was: he was infuriating. Even the smallest nudge from him could rile Maoney up until she was throwing kitchen knives at him across the living room. He always dodged them. He always bragged about it. 

“Hey, no,” Looke said in that soft voice of his that dragged across his tongue like gravel. “If something happened you can talk to me about it.”

“Who else am I going to talk to about it?”

There was a pause. “Valentina?”

They both laughed.

“No, but seriously,” Looke said. “What happened in there?”

“Well, it was sort of a going-away ceremony on my part.” Maoney was the kind of person to talk with her hands. She didn’t notice it until Looke raised an eyebrow. “The other kids were there for awards. I know mine was a whole set up. I think the Mayor just feels sorry for me.”

Looke tilted his head to the side. “What reason would he have to? It’s not exactly like you’re an orphan.” He paused. “No, wait, it’s exactly like that.”

Maoney swatted at him. “Stop pretending to be funny, you’ll never reach my level of dry wit.”

“I prefer wet wit.” He winked.

“And I prefer  _ literally vomiting right now on your feet _ .”

“Come on,” Looke said with his patented Looke smile. It was something halfway between lewd and mischievous. “You know I’m hilarious, moany.”

“ _ Anyway _ ,” Maoney said, making sure to drag out the syllables enough for a  _ sufficient burn _ . “I should probably check out my  _ Plane  _ business with Valentina. D’you know if he’s popping in today?”

“Probably,” Looke said with a roll of his eyes. “He likes to keep an eye on you.”

“What, cause you’re so mature you don’t need a babysitter?”

“Exactly that.”

Maoney stuck out her tongue. “Go train, loser, I’ve got some stuff to sort out.”

“Meet you on Blue Mountain?”

“Course.”

The two shook hands in a strange way that they deemed secret, and parted ways at the wooded crossroads. If Maoney were to describe the closest thing she had to a friend, it would be Looke. She’d known the guy since they were four, could even remember a time when she was taller than him. Now her so-called best friend was six-foot-two, left his blonde hair long and curling over his ears, and had somehow managed to antagonise Maoney about 40% more. 

It was a little walk back to the Oak House, not that Maoney minded; something about the familiar bend of the trees lining the path home felt exactly like that.  _ Home _ . Looke, on the other hand, wouldn’t dare to call the Oak House that, would rather spit on its foundations and brand it a prison than call it that. But Looke remembered his family, remembered the soft smiles and warm hands of the Naronias. And when it came to that, Maoney couldn’t exactly blame him. She wouldn’t know where to start. 

Through a break in the trees, an alcove in the beating heart of the woods, sat there like a faerie den, was the Oak House. It was small, small enough that there were barely enough rooms to hide in when Maoney and Looke got into their little spats. Luckily, Valentina had built the place so that the two of them had a bedroom of their own, a saviour when puberty hit and Maoney found herself ashamed to change in front of her friend. The was also the living room and dining room, separated by a wooden arch, because of course, everything in that cardboard box of a house was wooden. Off the dining room was a cushy little kitchen the size of a single bowling alley. The kitchen was Looke’s, was his haven when his hands bunched into fists. He’d learnt, back when they were ten, that fists were much more useful kneading bread than punching holes in walls. 

He’d also taken quite a fancy to fishing, much to Maoney’s begrudgement. The worst part about it was that he didn’t even  _ eat  _ the fish, he just caught them in that dumb net of his that he’d spent a week weaving while Maoney was simplifying fractions, stared at them with a glassy look in his eyes, and one by one tossed them back into the lake. 

As Maoney approached the house, she felt the back of her throat grind out a groan. There, blocking the steps, was Looke’s dumbass net. Maoney was about to practice a super cool kick she’d been working on that week, when Looke’s dumbass net...moved. If she had been Looke, she’d have screamed and run for the mountains. But she was Maoney. Maoney damn Waters. And she’d prepared for this day, prepared for the time a makeshift net might come to life through the will of dark power. Not specifically, that would be ridiculous, but she was still  _ prepared _ .

What she wasn’t prepared for, however, was that the moving net would begin to cry. 

She dropped to her knees, inspecting the odd little sound without touching the net; dark power wasn’t off the table yet. 

Another thing she wasn’t prepared for, was that the sound of the cry was...a hedgehog? “A hedgehog,” she whispered, daring to touch the net. She pulled the little creature from its knotted prison and placed it carefully on the ground. “Run along, now,” she said. 

It didn’t move. 

“Come on now, scurry on home.” 

The hedgehog blinked at her. 

“Ugh, fine,” she groaned, and picked up the little creature. “You can stay with me for one,  _ one  _ night, and then you’re off back to your own kind.”

It’s beady black eyes seemed to look at her knowingly.

“You’re right,” she said. “ _ Own kind.  _ Not one of us in this house is with their own kind.”

The hedgehog almost...smiled.

“Then I guess you can stay with us as long as you need, friend,” Maoney decided. “Although I best give you a name.” She tapped her chin. “Oo, Oo, what about Looke 2?”

If the hedgehog could have raised an eyebrow, it did. 

“Right, right, okay...then…Ron Weasley?”

Silence.

“He’s the best character,” Maoney whined. “Come  _ on _ , dude. What, you want me to name you after these damn woods? Tree? You wanna be called tree?”

The hedgehog blinked.

“Or flappin’...lake. Fish-lake. Or, or how about the rope you were caught in, huh? How about I call you Handerson Industries. You like that, Handerson? Like that, Handy? What’s this animal, Valentina says. Oh, just Handerson Industries, I reply. You think you’re funny, Hanny, do you?”

Again, silence.

“I mean.” Maoney paused. “Hanny doesn’t have half a bad ring to it, you know. Maybe you’ve bested me this time Handerson, but oh, the great Maoney Waters will be back for her sweet revenge.”

She carried Hanny up the steps and balanced him on one arm as she fumbled with the locks that both her and Looke had  _ begged  _ Valentina to change. It took a moment, a long moment, but the gate sprung free, and then she was stood at the front door. The best part about the Oak House, her favourite if she were asked, was that all she had to do was knock.

The door creaked open slowly, and the dining table greeted her. The flowers in the centre of it were well past wilted, and she remembered  _ distinctly  _ asking Looke to pick another bunch.  _ Oh well _ , she thought, placing Hanny on one of the sparse half-pieces of rattan furniture in the living room.  _ Valentina will be here sooner or later, he can fix them _ .

And he really could, that was the most precedential difference between what Valentina referred to as Guardians, and Angels: Angels held godly power, so much so that Maoney didn’t even  _ want _ to wrap her head around it. 

The left hand side of the living room bore windows, nothing but windows, huge shards of glass with odd half-rectangle, half-pentagon shapes. And outside those windows? Valentina was waltzing up the path. 

His suit was neatly-ironed and grey, and Valentina’s suit was like his hair. Or his nose. Unchanging. His eyes met Maoney’s through the window, and a slick grin cut through his lips. One moment he was outside, smiling like the slimy Angel he was, the next he was beside Maoney in a cloud of white smoke, peering out the window, nose-first. 

“What are we looking at?” the man said, and it was the closest thing to humour Maoney could associate with him.

“Very funny, Valentina. Nice trip?”

He clasped his hands behind his back and began to rock back and forth. “Pleasant enough.”

“Coffee?”

He wrinkled his nose.

“Tea?”

“If you please.”

While Maoney was heating the kettle on the stove, Valentina stood upright in the kitchen doorway, as upright as physically possible for the human skeleton, not that anything about him was remotely human. 

“I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Maoney said, dropping a tea bag in the kettle. “I’ve had a sort of...abnormality with my  _ Planes  _ recently.”

“With your  _ Plane _ ?”

“With my  _ Planes _ .”

Valentina wrinkled his long nose. “Let me see.”

Maoney met him in the doorway and pulled her sleeve back.

Valentina didn’t mask his gasp. “My, my, what is happening here?”

Maoney bit her lip. “Has this happened before?”

“Once,” Valentina said, and his tone left Maoney tugging her arm back. “But it’s nothing to worry about, purely means that your powers are growing.”

“My powers?”

“Yes.”

“You mean the powers I’m not allowed to use?”

Valentina tutted. “That’s Looke’s-” he paused, grey eyes widening. “Nevermind.” He coughed once, louder than usual. Maoney knew it was louder than usual, because the man never coughed. “Where is that boy anyway?”

“Blue Mountain,” Maoney said. “I’m supposed to meet him there later for training.”

“Good.” Valentina clasped his hands and wandered towards the door. “Oh, before I leave, how was the ceremony?”

“Uneventful,” Maoney lied. “Would you mind fixing the flowers on the way out? Looke didn’t bother to pick new ones.”

“That boy shall be the death of you,” Valentina said lightly, and he  _ did  _ say it lightly, but there was something strange about it. Valentina wasn’t one for idioms. 


	2. Chapter Two

_Trinities and Fallen Places Chapter Two_

Maoney had tolerated the silence for half an hour before retreating to the bathroom. If Looke’s place was the kitchen, the bathroom was hers. Disgusting as it sounds, with the door locked and a tub full of bubbles, there wasn’t a place in the world that felt safer than that little white room to her. She sat on the rim of the sink, legs folded, head in hands, slowly massaging her temples. 

Sometimes the thick of it, the hiss of nothingness, was like a wave to her: crashing and encompassing and far too frightening to battle alone. When the nothingness came at night, she’d crawl into Looke’s bed and the two of them would curl into each other. When the nothingness came during the day, she’d call for him and they’d bunch up on the old crumbling sofa and watch reruns of Doctor Who on the junky little tv in the living room. Right now he couldn’t hear her call, wasn’t warm and inviting in his bed. And that left only one option: breaking the law.

She tried to teleport into a thicket of trees, but of course, she landed herself centimetres from falling into Looke’s lap.

“Mao, did you just teleport?”

She brushed off the fuzzy green aftermath of magic. “No.”

“Then I guess I’m not devilishly handsome.”

“What?”

“Well, if we’re going to lie, might as well make it ridiculous,” he said with a wink, and that was so _like_ Looke. “Ready to start?”

“Oh, we’re training?” Maoney said. “I thought we were just sitting around, being lazy, looking dumb and-”

Looke was up in a flutter of a distant bird’s wing, a crunch of a twig underfoot, a tick of Maoney’s internal clock. His arms were around her neck, and then she was on the ground, elbows scraped.

“What did I tell you about softening your fall?”

Maoney inhaled deeply; he’d knocked the flapping breath out of her. “To do it?”

Looke rolled his eyes. 

“I’m technically right, aren’t I?”

There was a pause. “I mean, _technically_ , yes.”

“I’m gonna take that as a win,” Maoney said as she kicked her left foot into Looke’s ankle. He fell with a thud and an ‘oof’, and from his wide eyes, she’d actually surprised him. “And I’m gonna take _that_ as a win, too.”

He was on his feet instantly, legs shoulder width apart, raising an eyebrow. It was sort of a ‘come hither’ thing, it was how he teased her. 

Maoney just shook her head and lunged forwards, grabbing onto a thick tree branch. She pulled herself around it, landing on her knees. Using her boot to snap off a spear-shaped twig, she indicated for Looke to come forwards with a bend of her finger. As he stepped towards the tree, she fell to the ground with the branch between her teeth. Her landing was a little shaky, but hey, that’s what training was for. 

Looke was now centimetres away, stumbling a bit from the impact of Maoney’s fall. He had dust in his eyes, a gash on his cheek, and...oh, for Valentina’s sake, a branch of his own. He wielded his weapon, a heavy piece of wood, like a mallet, and grinned with blood in his teeth. 

“How are you already injured?” Maoney said with a sigh.

Looke shrugged. “I’m reckless?”

“Yeah you are.” Maoney spun around, branch clashing against Looke’s. The two of them danced, branches in hand, stepping between each other like they’d spent years rehearsing this. Their noses were inches from each other, she could smell the sweat in his hair. 

_Crash_. 

Maoney held half her branch in her right hand, the other half in the left. She smirked, wrung her wrists a few times, and stabbed with both hands. 

And then there was pain. 

Her arms set on fire, the left one first, and green, fizzy light was pouring out from her wrist, her _Plane_. 

“Mao?”

Her grip on the twigs tightened until the wood turned to ash. Her head bent back, a scream pulled from her lungs-

“Mao, stop.” Looke’s voice was soft, his arms even softer. They were huddled in that little clearing on the east side they’d nicknamed Green Valley when they were seven. Her arms were red, and then they weren’t. 

“Did I hurt you?”

“No,” Looke said, pulling away. “Just scared me, a bit. I guess you were right about your _Plane_ acting up, huh.”

_Planes_ , she wanted to say, but a little voice inside her head stopped her. The little voice was British and incredibly annoying. It was Valentina. So instead, she just rubbed her arms, and gave Looke a half-hearted smile. 

“We should get back to the Oak House,” Looke said, eyes on the sky. It was darker now, bruising maroon. 

“Teleport?”

He gave her a look. “Laws are there for a reason, Mao.”

“To be broken?”

“Not even in the slightest.” He held out his hand and offered her a nod. “Ready?”


	3. Chapter Three

_ Trinities and Fallen Places Chapter Three _

It was a long walk down the mountain, and by the time they reached the woods, a canopy of stars shrouded them. Looke walked in silence, like he always did, brows furrowed and shoulders hunched. It was like this place was haunting him, crushing him from the outside in, an eternal beast on his shoulders. 

The house was glowing gold when they arrived, and Maoney let out a sigh. It would be warm inside if Valentina was home. As much as Looke begrudged the guy, it always felt a little more whole when he was around, nose stuffed up in the air and full of belittlement. They, two orphans and a suit-maven Angel, felt an inch closer to something resembling a family. 

“Dad’s home,” Looke said snidely, and Maoney almost resented him for that. The Oak House  _ was  _ her home. And Valentina, well, Valentina was Valentina and he was the only person other than Looke she could trust.

Maybe that’s why it hurt so much, when the door opened, and the floors were coated in blood. 


	4. Chapter Four

_ Trinities and Fallen Places Chapter Four _

He had that glassy look in his eyes, like the world before him was a fish, a fish he was about to throw back into the water. Maoney was the one to bend down, to dip her fingers into the stream of red. It smelt like human.

“He’s not dead,” she said, standing up. “Or at least, not yet. This isn’t his blood.”

Looke didn’t react. He just walked into the living room and flopped down on the sofa. 

“Looke, are you listening to me, there’s still a chance…” Maoney cleared her throat. “We should reach out to the others, if we go through the  _ Mortal Planes _ -”

“What others?” Looke was slouched, foot tapping against the floor. 

“There have to be some Guardians nearby, if we just use the  _ Mortal Planes  _ to-”

“No one’s gonna answer us, we’re a rogue Angel’s little experiments.” His voice was almost bitter. “Might as well just get some rest for tonight or something…”

“Looke, you’re sitting in blood,” Maoney pleaded. There was so much flapping blood. The stench clawed at her arms and pulled through her hair until she stopped, until she listened. “Oh.” Dread filled her chest like a balloon. “Oh no.”

She ran through to the kitchen, the living room, and they were all there. The girl she’d sat next to in chemistry, the lunch lady who’d always given her extra bread. Mayor Finlay was in the living room. And her bedroom: she kicked the door open, and the smell flooded out. The smarmy boy. She hadn’t even learnt his damn name. 

“This isn’t about Valentina,” she realised, backing away from her bedroom. “Whoever is playing this sick game, they never cared about Valentina. This is about me.”

Looke shrugged. And that was Maoney’s tipping point.

“My whole school is dead. Everyone in town, the kids that hid around here at Halloween, the old guy that played guitar in the town square. Looke, don’t you give a flap? Our home is flooded with the blood of everyone we knew-”

“This is _not_ my home,” Looke spat. He was still sat, shoulders hunched unnaturally, back turned. “And I didn’t know any of those damn humans. You wanted to play little village, Mao, but I stayed the flap out of it.”

Maoney exhaled. “Innocent lives, Looke-”

“No one’s innocent, Mao.” His voice cut like glass. “No one.”

“What about Valentina?” she asked. “He’s an Angel. Pure of soul. You’re gonna let him die, too?”

“Like you said, Maoney. This is about you.”


	5. Chapter Five

_ Trinities and Fallen Places Chapter Five _

The weapons were kept in Looke’s room, in a little cupboard under his bed. It was against the law for underage Guardians to use them, even touch them, apparently. Looke had never trusted her with things like that, with her powers or with weapons, or with looking after her damn self. 

He kept the key to the cupboard in a trinket box that had once belonged to his mother. He thought that part was a secret, but a few years ago Maoney had woken up to his sobbing, and seen him clutching that little silver box. She hadn’t meant to spy, just been fascinated. Looke had never cried before. Or, more accurately, he’d never cried in front of her. 

She’d seen him take the key out of the box and open his cupboard. Then he’d taken out a dagger, a long, golden dagger, held it between his palms like it was glass, and stabbed it into the wall a hundred times. 

Now, he was blank, just sat on the sofa, eyes wide and unblinking. She couldn’t even bring herself to feel guilty about breaking into his cupboard. The weapon she chose appeared to glow a little more than the others. It had a juicy ruby embedded in the handle that seemed to whisper. It was a word she didn’t understand, but resonated with her, somehow.  _ Veryth. _

Outside the air was warmer than usual, or maybe it was her. Maybe she was vibrating from the inside out. 

She held the ruby dagger in her left hand; it would work better if it was close to her  _ Plane _ . Then she held it up, held it high until it snagged on something, on the edge of a diamond rope in the sky. That was it, the Mortal Planes, forged by Angels from  _ Imarase _ , an angelic substance meant for channeling power. It was scorched white, and once the dagger hit it, lit up like fireflies. 

The Mortal Planes moved, dispelled, fractured like sound waves and hummed across the skyline. Maoney closed her eyes, held that dagger tight, and wished. She called out silently through her left wrist, begged for someone to be listening. 

_ Valentina. Valentina. Valentina.  _

Her eyes snapped open. She was no longer alone in the woods. 


End file.
